Ibis Bicycles was founded by Scot Nicol, one of the earliest mountain bikers in northern California. It all began in Nicol's garage in 1981, when a friend asked him to build a frame. Ibis entered the MTB industry at the 2005 Interbike tradeshow. Nicol has since partnered with Hans Heim, formerly of Specialized, Tom Morgan, and Roxy Lo.
Ibis was among the MTB companies who came up with sophisticated steel tubing designs for bikes. Nicol and Ibis called their tubing "Moron"- meaning it had more on the ends for strength and less in the middle to give the bikes light weight (a standard practice in cycling called "butted tubing")
They are also remembered for their sculpture-like "hand job" cable hanger, which resembled a fist reaching up and grabbing the rear brake cable. The Hand Job took an overlooked part of every other bike and made it a focal point for an Ibis, and as such symbolized the company.
The Bow-ti design was unique in being the only full suspension frame ever produced that did not use pivots to separate the front and rear triangle. A complex system of flexible titanium tubes provided up to 5 inches (125mm) of travel.